Concrete Producer -Thanks to the awful 2011 season, the public is getting serious about tornadoes and how to survive them. “Everyone is experiencing quite a surge right now,” says Ernst Kiesling, executive director of the National Storm Shelter Association (NSSA), based at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, where Kiesling also is a professor of civil engineering. He believes most precast producers have experienced increases similar to Barger's.

MinnPost -'Texans, if you look back through history, have always been able to deal with calamity, and that's still true,' says Richard Verrone, a historian at Texas Tech in Lubbock. 'But unless you see it firsthand, it's hard to imagine the complete losses that are taking away livelihoods and hurting families not just now, but potentially for a couple of generations.'